LFS Today Jun 21, 2022

 News  

Instructions for shipping packages from McML

If you plan to ship packages from the Dean’s Office, please fill out the Sender Info Collection Form and read the instructions in the form. Depending on the contents and destination, you may need to fill in additional forms. Please email the form to dean.landfood@ubc.ca at least 2 business days before the planned shipment day. After the Sender Info Collection Form is received, further instructions and shipping fee estimates will be provided.

If your shipment doesn’t need special packaging or storage, you can come to the Dean’s Office to fill in the form and drop off the package (at least 2 business days before the planned shipment day).

For emergency shipments, please contact dean.landfood@ubc.ca to confirm if it can be arranged.

Full instructions are available on the intranet under Operations Policies.

Free LFS swag at the Dean’s Office

Usable (but dated) LFS merchandise is available for free at the Dean’s Office while quantities last.

Items available:

• Collapsible water bladders
• A few “Class of 2021” 12oz insulated cups
• 1 x umbrella
• 1 x 2020 Vancouver Sun Run t-shirt

Tech Tip Tuesday: Keeping Software Up to Date

It is a better practice to keep software applications on your computer and mobile devices up to date. Software vendors frequently release security patches and updates for your devices. This protects you from malicious actors and cybersecurity attacks, fixes any software bugs, and can introduce new software features.

Software apps will typically have an auto-update feature built in to take care of this, and occasionally you may be prompted to re-launch the application to complete the installation which is as simple as closing the app and then re-opening.

For some software apps, you may have to manually apply updates. To do this, you will have to locate the updates feature, normally found in the Settings, Help, or About menus.

For LFS staff and faculty machines, the management tool Desktop Central is used to deploy patches on Windows and Macs on the UBC network, updating Office, Adobe Acrobat, Zoom, Firefox, Chrome, and other common apps used.

Contact the LFS Learning Centre if you have any questions or need assistance at it@landfood.ubc.ca.

 Events  

June 22 – Fall 2022 CIHR Project Grant Webinar and Early Consultations

To kick-off SPARC Project support for the Fall, a panel of speakers have been coordinated to discuss their experiences serving on CIHR Project Grant Peer Review Committees (PRCs). This event will be held on Wednesday, June 22 from 10:30am-12:00pm via Zoom.

This event is suitable for all faculty and affiliated staff, and would be especially beneficial for new faculty and early career researchers (ECR). For more information and to register, please see the Insights from Peer Review page.

Additionally, at the June 2 University Delegates meeting, CIHR released the dates for the upcoming Fall 2022 Project Grant cycle. They are as follows:

• Fall 2022 competition launch date: Tuesday, July 5
• Fall 2022 Registration Deadline: Wednesday, August 17
• Fall 2022 Application Deadline: Wednesday, September 14

If any faculty members who would be interested in scheduling a consultation ahead of time, please feel free to contact Marliese Dawson, new SPARC lead for CIHR Project Grant, directly marliese.dawson@ubc.ca, to schedule a meeting.

June 23 to Aug. 4 – JEDII STEM Series Summer Workshops

Just launched: the JEDII STEM Series summer workshops explore how you can support equity-deserving groups and shift your unit’s recruitment and hiring practices to support justice, equity, decolonization, Indigenization and inclusion (JEDII). Open to faculty, staff, postgrad scholars and graduate students at UBCV and UBCO.

June to August 2022 (next session is June 23)

Learn more and register

 Deadlines  

July 31 – Partnership Opportunities with PepsiCo, Takeda, Bayer and more

PepsiCo

• Materials and technologies for greenhouse gas reduction in packaging
  Reduce GHG emissions during packaging production or over the lifecycle of PET bottles, aluminum cans, and glass packaging
  Funding: $25,000 USD is available for a proof-of-concept in 2022, with an additional $50,000-100,000 available for further development.
• Technologies to minimize the salty taste of electrolytes
  Minimize the perception of a salty taste in beverages containing electrolytes
  Funding is proposal-dependent and typically ranges from $25,000 to $100,000 for a 6-month proof-of-concept.

Takeda

• Small molecule binders of lysosomal proteins and glycosaminoglycans for eventual use as PET ligands
  Identify small molecule binders or binding motifs that can bind glycosaminoglycans, sphingolipids, or lysosomal proteins
  Funding: $150,000 – $300,000 over 1-2 years for further evaluation of potential leads along with possible license of the researcher’s patented materials.

Bayer Crop Science

• Grants4Ag: Space biology exploration at Biosphere 2
  Conduct fundamental plant science research in a space-simulating environment
  Funding: Funding is proposal-dependent and typically ranges from $5,000 to $15,000. Prior recipients have used the funding for contract research, personnel, equipment and other purchases. Indirect costs are not included.
• Grants4Ag: Climate solutions through plant modifications
  Enable carbon sequestration or removal in cereals, legumes and pulses relying on the use of gene editing or transgenes
  Funding: $5,000-$10,000. Funds will be in the form of a credit towards transformation work at the Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center. The final amount and scope of work will be based on discussions between the selected project teams, WCIC and the Bayer team.
• Grants4Ag: Enabling technologies for plant transformation
  Develop new plant transformation technologies for row crops, particularly monocots
  Funding: $5,000 to $15,000. Prior recipients have used the funding for contract research, personnel, equipment and other purchases. Indirect costs are not included.

Confidential F500 Company

• Technology to remove chemicals, odors, VOCs and pathogens in air
  Remove, destroy, or eliminate chemicals and odors in air
  Funding: $25,000 to $100,000 for a 6-month proof-of-concept project with the potential for follow-on funding for 1-3 years.

The submission deadline for all calls is July 31. One-page proposals can be submitted online via the Halo application form which should take less than an hour to complete. If you have any questions, please reach out to James Wang at j.wang@ubc.ca.